Musical genres kind of mean less and less as the years go by, especially since “pop” has just become a catch-all for anything that doesn’t neatly fit into Rock, Rap, Country, or R&B. For me in particular, this current crop of country artists make a lot of music that would fit into any R&B Top 40 radio programming if just a few instruments were swapped out because so many of them grew up on 90s R&B and you can hear it in the music. Because of Maren Morris’ love/hate relationship with country, I keep hoping that she’ll just go full tilt into R&B, the way she was leaning on “Great Ones.”
To piggyback off of that from last week, here are some of my favorite songs by people who stepped outside of their genre.
Taylor Swift “New Romantics”
Might as well go ahead and get Taylor out of the way! I grew up with Taylor Swift as my favorite country singer, making songs about boys the way that I would make songs about boys. I’ve been less invested in her since she decided to leave country, but “New Romantics” is in my top 5 Taylor Swift songs regardless of genre. It goes on every road trip playlist.
Outkast “Hey Ya!”
The way this song came completely out of left field! Looking back, Speakerboxx/The Love Below was the beginning of the end of Outakst once Andre could fully spread his wings and go wild. Now he has a Best Album nomination for that dreadful flute album y’all pretended to like, but the seeds go back to this moment.
Nelly Furtado “Promiscuous”
Nelly Furtado was a barefoot Canadian skipping through fields about being a bird, and then all of a sudden, she linked up with Timbaland and put out one of the quintessential party pop jams of the 2000s.
Beck “Tropicalia”
Odelay made Beck into a superstar with an album full of samples and influenced by hip-hop. After collecting awards like Pokemon, he came back for Mutations with a folk-influence led off by “Tropicalia” pulled straight off a beach somewhere in Brazil.
Rihanna “Shut Up & Drive”
Rihanna released two albums as Junior Beyonce with honey-brown extensions to match. She chopped it all off, dyed it black, and became an icon in her own right with her third album. And FeFe Dobson is still mad that Rihanna got this pop-rock jam and she didn’t.
Beyonce “Texas Hold Em”
Speaking of Beyonce, she just got 11 Grammy nominations for Cowboy Carter.
Madonna “Ray of Light”
Madonna had done pop, R&B, deep house, adult contemporary, but it was still a shock to see her combining her new-found spiritual mysticism with electronica when she came back from Evita and a baby with Ray of Light.
Gwen Stefani “Luxurious”
I need the girls to start appropriating culture again because this ska/punk white girl threw on her best chola gear with a sample made iconic by Biggie Smalls and nobody blinked an eye.
Janet Jackson “Black Cat”
My personal favorite Janet Genre Benders are “If” (those fuzzy guitars still slap!” and “This Time” (because who was putting opera in the middle of their R&B album (thanks Beyonce for reaching back for this reference)), but “Black Cat” and was very groundbreaking for 1990. With her Grammy nomination for Best Female Rock Vocal, she became the second artist in history to nab nominations in five separate genre categories and the first woman nominated for a song that she wrote and produced alone.
Nelly “Over and Over” feat. Tim McGraw
Truth be told, Nelly was always country — his first album was called Country Grammar and, other than Beyonce, Nelly is the premiere Rap Singing artist. Still, you don’t see a country singer on a hip-hop track that often, so this collaboration was outside of the box.
Chris Lane “Let Me Love You”
Like I said, country music is only a few instruments away from R&B most of the time, so when Chris Lane released this cover of Mario’s “Let Me Love You,” it worked better than most people would have predicted.
Whitney Houston “I Will Always Love You”
Speaking of cross-genre covers, there’s no better example than Whitney covering Dolly Parton.
Brownstone “I Can’t Tell You Why”
But since we’re here! My personal favorite cross-genre cover is when Brownstone stuck this classic from the Eagles onto their debut album. I can’t even listen to the original now without doing the R&B riffs. The music video is impossible to find online anymore (and I can’t tell you why that is…..ba-domp-tiss), but the album version was far superior anyway.
Tina Turner “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”
After years of struggling as a solo artist to leave the legacy of Ike Turner behind (both marriage and music), Tina Turner hit it big in her 40s with one of the biggest albums of the 80s.
Steve Martin & Edie Brickell “Love Has Come For You”
Last but not least, sometimes crossing genres is crossing artistic mediums. Steve Brickell is one of the most legendary comedians of all time, but he’s actually been playing banjo since a child. After he started taking music seriously in the 2000s, he grabbed two Grammys before linking up with Edie Brickell for their album, Love Has Come For You. (Fun fact, the album cover art is a painting by Martin Mull, who y’all might remember as Leon — the gay boss from Roseanne). Two of the songs on this album were re-worked for Bright Star, one of my top ten Broadway musicals, but the lead single from the album won the pair a Grammy for Bluegrass Performance.
The end! See y’all next week.
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